It'd be hard to tax them now since most of them are bleeding cash. I suppose you can go after Google, they make a ton of cash.
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
731–740 of 1001 posts
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not an easy question. It seemingly boils down to: what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? However, the root questions are: what should the state provide, how much, and of what nature? A secondary question then becomes how important the redistributive aspect is. That’s what you’re seemingly alluding to when you say: people work, get taxed on it, but others automate…
> what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? The right question is who benefits the most from state’s services. For example if a whole lot of security, legislative or admin services go to protecting the capital, then those who has the most capital need to chip in the most. > redistribution is usually that “more” people reach a higher standard of living, then adding taxes and…
Actually real wages have increased a lot since the 70s if you count employer contributions to employee heath insurance. The problem is that a lot of that money is being wasted by an inefficient healthcare system, and employers probably shouldn't even be involved in sponsoring group health plans in the first place.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
> salaries for contributors grow I dont see that happening
Indeed that has not happened: https://tinyurl.com/3dutardj
No that's just a really misleading graph. Most of the gap disappears once you include variable pay like benefits, overtime, bonuses, stock comp etc.
See this explanation and corrected graph: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/economic-synopses-6715/w...
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#734Should you pay more personal taxes because you do the job of three other people because you use better tools?
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some places do have a capital gains tax of zero. Switzerland is one of them, and Switzerland is economically more successful than the rest of Europe. Tax Switzerland is a bad example because they tax capital more directly. In the form of a wealth tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland#Wealth... GP said setting taxes on capital to zero was a bad idea. Switzerland has only set capital gains taxes…
I live in Switzerland. It's an excellent example of a place without a capital gains tax, because it doesn't have one. I didn't say it doesn't have other taxes! The type of tax matters a lot. The reason capital gains taxes are bad is that they discourage investment, but investment is how you create wealth. "Creating wealth" is ultimately a synonym for creating material progress. Voters like progress, and so this is a…
Isn't a wealth tax just an expanded capital gains tax?
If last year I had wealth X and this year I have wealth X+Y, I have to pay a wealth tax on the gains, in addition to the the tax on the amount I had previously.
So my gains are still taxed.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#736Capitalism can only work when there's cheap labor and someone consumes the fruit of said labor. When nobody earns is the same as everyone earns the same amount (aka inflation) as long as there have been humans, there will be someone grabbing more than everyone else. So question would be how do you make transition into a world where there's less paid work?
Yet, no one is pressed to emigrate live in non-capitalist North Korea or Cuba.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#737Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same place they've always gone: to consumers purchasing the products made by those automated processes. The average person now is far wealthier in terms of actual purchasing power than the average person 100 years ago, and that's largely because of automation making everything cheaper.
> The average person now is far wealthier in terms of actual purchasing power than the average person 100 years ago access to housing is incredibly expensive. Measuring their purchasing power for how many scented candles they can buy is pretty meaningless when they are much closer to homelessness than ever before.
This is actually _because_ automation has been so effective.
It's called Baumol's cost disease.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% agree! I find quite concerning that this point is not immediate in any conversation about AI or robots impacting the number of jobs, and the subsequent conversation about innovating new taxes. AI and robots are capital as any other automation on a factory, and capital gains should be taxed appropriately. This is not a new thing completely separate from the untouchable status quo wrt existing taxes. If it tickles…
States not being able to regulate this is dangerous. A close friend of mine has given up on reality and talks about Roberto the love of her life the one she always wanted and Roberto is chatGPT :-(. She previously mentioned she didnt like chatGPT 5.0 cause it wasnt as agreeable yet now she says 5.1 is better.. back to how it was before 5.0 and now out of the blue mentioned Roberto. chatGPT is a sypcophant and without…
That's a non sequitur. Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean that governments should be able to regulate it. Often the "cure" is worse than the disease and the last thing we need is more intrusive government power.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#739No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.
If AI really is just another capital amplifier, then the problem isn't new, AI just makes the existing imbalance harder to ignore
It's the ultimate capital amplifier. The end goal - AGI - essentially means the ability to derive wealth from capital directly, without any pesky middlemen such as laborers who need to be paid. The endgame is capital without labor.
But, of course, in such a society, the people who don't own the robots - i.e. most of us - become "economically unnecessary".
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#740Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? The right question is who benefits the most from state’s services. For example if a whole lot of security, legislative or admin services go to protecting the capital, then those who has the most capital need to chip in the most. > redistribution is usually that “more” people reach a higher standard of living, then adding taxes and…
Actually real wages have increased a lot since the 70s if you count employer contributions to employee heath insurance. The problem is that a lot of that money is being wasted by an inefficient healthcare system, and employers probably shouldn't even be involved in sponsoring group health plans in the first place.
>if you count employer contributions to employee heath insurance
You shouldn't.
>and employers probably shouldn't even be involved in sponsoring group health plans in the first place.
They are free to lobby for socialized medicine, but they don't because they like how the current system helps lock employees into bad jobs for any amount of healthcare.